Sunday, 17 July 2011

Jet lag

July is with us, and with it the Summer holidays, the season for travelling abroad. For some of us, that’ll mean travelling across many time zones that confuses our body clock and causes “jet lag”.

Our ancestors didn’t have to worry about “horse-and-cart-lag” or “boat-lag”, but due to the advent of high speed flight we can put our body in a different time zone very quickly.

Our ancestors didn't have to worry about the effects of crossing time zones quickly on their body clock. Image (C) Jungle_Boy

When we suffer jet lag, the rhythms of our different organs become out of sync with one another. Our stomach wants food at the wrong time; we are wide awake at night and sleepy during the day; our hearts have low blood pressure during the day when we are being active.

To top this off we can suffer symptoms from flying itself: dry mouth from the air conditioning, cramped muscles from sitting still for so long, tiredness from not sleeping well.

To maximise the fun we have on holidays I have provided some tips to minimise the effects of flying and to resynch to the new time zone as quickly as possible.

To prevent the short term effects of flying, and this includes when flying northerly or southerly where you won’t change time zones, follow these tips:

1. Drink plenty of water, and less caffeine, carbonated drinks, and alcohol.

2. Walk around on the plane and do regular leg exercises. Loosen or take off your shoes.

3. Plan your trip to arrive in the evening, this way you can sleep off the travel fatigue when you arrive.

Strategies to adjust your body clock rapidly to the new time zone depend on whether you are flying East or West. When going East you need to wake up earlier, this effectively shortens the day. When going West you need to stay up later, effectively lengthening the day. Most people’s body clock runs slightly longer than 24 hours, so it’s easier to stay up later, and therefore westward travel can be quicker to adapt to.